Robert Elwood Bly was born on December 23, 192, in Madison, Lac qui Parle County, Minnesota, son of parents of Norwegian ancestry.

He was an American poet, essayist, translator, activist, and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. He spent two years in the Navy (1944-1946). After one year at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, he transferred to Harvard (B.A., 1950). He lived in New York City for a few years. In 1954, he attended the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. In 1956, he received a Fulbright grant to travel to Norway and translate Norwegian poetry into English. In 1966, Bly co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and led much of the opposition among writers to that war. In 1968, he won the National Book Award for "The Light Around the Body," the book of poetry focusing on politics, the Vietnam War, and the events in the America of the late 1960s. He published more than 40 collections of poetry, edited many others, and published translations of poetry and prose from Swedish, Norwegian, German, Spanish, Persian and Urdu. He received the McKnight Foundation's Distinguished Artist Award in 2000, and the Maurice English Poetry Award in 2002. His book “The Night Abraham Called to the Stars” (2002) was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award. He also edited the prestigious Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribners). In 2008, Bly was named Minnesota's first poet laureate and in 2013, he was awarded the Robert Frost Medal, a lifetime achievement recognition given by the Poetry Society of America.

In 1955, he married Carolyn M. "Carol" McLean (1930–2007) and divorced in 1979. In 1980, he remarried Ruth Counsell. He died on November 21, 2021, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Helen Gilmour Boa of St Laurent, Québec, attended Granby High School, and received her diploma from the McGill Normal School in 1906.